I've been looking through boards, FAQs, and finding anything I can read about, since I'm going to buy a new DVD burner. My main purpose for this burner is to make backups of my currently owned DVDs, so I need a format that is stable for DVD players. I've been looking at the Dual Layer Drives, but there aren't that many of them yet. Is this something that will be more prominent in produced DVDs in the near future? Is it best to wait a few months or will single layer be sufficient for a couple of years? I'm probably going to get an external drive and I currently have a 2.0 enhanced USB controller. I've read differing things, but does anyone know of serious problems with this as opposed to having a direct internal drive? From what I understand a DVD+RW will also write DVD+R discs & DVD-RW will also write DVD-R discs? Is this correct? Any software recommendations for my burning purposes would also be appreciated. Thanks
Hi, Some very good questions you have there! Let's take them in order shall we? It's true there are only a few DL models on the shelves right now but we can expect that to change quite a bit in the coming months. DL is the new big thing and every drive maker is going to want to get in on the action. Whether to wait for more DL models or to even get a DL burner now depends on you. How often will you take advantage DL burning? Are you willing to pay $10-$15 per disc for the media? Single layer burners will eventually get phased out but I don't see that happening until the DL media is affordable enough for the majority of people to migrate to DL burners and even then I imagine SL media will be around for quite some time since not everyone needs to burn everything to DL media. External drives are perfectly fine as long as you have USB 2.0 support from your system as you've already indicated. As far as DVD formats go there are two: +R and -R with both formats having their respective rewritable version (RW). Here's a cool link to some great info about DVDs in general: http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html For software I'm a big fan of Nero6 Ultra which is a very flexible and stable burning suite that includes Recode2 which can compress and burn DVDs though it does need an third party app like DVD 43 or AnyDVD to bypass the encryption. DVD Shrink is a great freeware app that will rip/compress movies and can also use the burning engine from DVD Decrypter or Nero to automate the entire process. Another great combo is Elby's CloneDVD2 coupled with SlySoft's AnyDVD. Here's a link to a thread that has a wealth of information on the best apps out there. It's a biggie but the basics you're looking for are in the first few pages: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/88038 _X_X_X_X_X_[small] "And there we saw the giants ... And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." Numbers 13:33[/small]
